the

parent of a

Homosexual

by Ruth M. Friedman

"What have I done wrong?" Or, "For what am I being punished?" Have you not asked these things of yourself at one time or another, because you are the parent of a homosexual?

Science tells you "You have been too prudish." Science tells you also that "You have been indiscreet. You have denied and/or indulged, suppressed, stimulated," and so forth ad infinitum. These contradictions. don't make sense, do they? So, what are you to believe?

We are living in a time when science seems to be put on a pedestal much akin to the pulpit. The spiritual seems to be of secondary or no importance. What God creates seems to need an excuse.

You are the parent of a son or a daughter. Whomever, they love, does not make them any less your children or you any less a parent. If you were horrified at the first disclosures of their homosexuality, or if you were enraged, bear in mind that they too may have been. It's not always easy to learn that you are "different," that you are one of the people smut magazines write about, the churches deny. the majority scorns, ridicules and often despises. No. It is not always easy to be homosexual. So, if you've made the discovery of homosexuality in your child and found it hard to live with, hard to accept, remember what they may have gone through to resolve their decision to live in a way that is, to them, entirely normal-and decent to their nature. This does not make sense to you? Let us put it this way then: if I were to approach you with the preposterous suggestion that you live a homosexual life, you would be horrified. Wouldn't you? You might even strike at me. Your sense